Last Thursday evening, a French-Algerian footballer arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on a flight from Doha.

For
the previous two years, he had been trapped in Qatar. A dispute over
unpaid wages led to his numerous requests for an ‘exit visa’ being
denied. Eighteen months with no income. A wife and two children to
support.

Depressed, suicidal, he contemplated hunger strike. He sold his furniture and slept on the floor of his empty house.

For two years, Zahir Belounis was a slave, his basic human rights ignored. Last Thursday evening, he was finally free.

But Belounis is an after-thought. So too is Abdeslam Ouaddou, another
journeyman footballer, a former Moroccan international who endured a
similar stand-off with a Qatari club over wages owed. Speaking to the
International Trade Union Confederation earlier this year, Ouaddou said:
“When you arrive in Qatar, it’s beautiful — a country under
construction with tall skyscrapers. But it’s like spotting an oasis in
the desert when you’re thirsty.

“When you get closer, you realise there’s nothing there. It’s a mirage.
If the country does not change its ways then in 2022 we will have the
World Cup of Shame and the World Cup of Slavery because of how Qatar
disrespects human rights.”

Football has turned its back on social issues for a long time. The
sport’s governing body continues to avoid taking hard-line action
against racism and awarded successive World Cup tournaments in 2018 and
2022 to countries who take pride in their anti-gay legislation. But
Fifa’s form on such matters goes back a long way. In 2008, Sepp Blatter
suggested there was too much ‘modern slavery’ in how footballers were
bought and sold. He felt players weren’t protected enough. Naturally,
there was an outcry. Blatter was not just wrong. The flippant remark,
made in regard to the pampered, lock-jawed, pop-star, football elite,
was insensitive and ignorant to an ill that was rapidly spreading.

Monday, on RTÉ One, the first episode in a new series of Peadar King’s
‘What In The World?’ focuses on this ever-expanding African enterprise.
Filmed in Cameroon and France, the documentary investigates how rogue
agents and local football ‘experts’ trade in a most-lucrative of
currencies: young, naive footballers. They aspire to be the next Samuel
Eto’o or Yaya Toure. They want the Premier League or Serie A. What they
get is abandonment, homelessness and embarrassment.

We hear Issa’s story. A Malian, he arrived in Paris at 16. A goalkeeper,
he dreamed of emulating his heroes Iker Casillas and Gianluigi Buffon.
His ‘agent’ promised everything. A contract with a French club? No
problem. All the ‘agent’ needed was a substantial payment. Issa’s
parents raised the money, somehow. The ‘agent’ accompanied Issa to
Paris. They went to McDonalds. The ‘agent’ gave Issa €20. Then he left.
Issa waited for three hours. That’s Issa’s story.

Another young African, Willy, points to a stairwell inside a dilapidated
stadium. That’s where he slept for two months. He had been deserted by
his ‘agent’ too. He called him relentlessly. The ‘agent’s’ phone was
switched off. It’s a jarring, uncomfortable reality. The boys’ names are
interchangeable but their stories are identical. Another boy, Raul, had
paid the ultimate price. He returned home to Africa after similar
broken promises. A talented player, his parents had handed over
thousands of euro to get him to Europe. The ‘agent’ took the money and
never came back. Raul’s father now needs treatment for diabetes. There’s
no money for the treatment. Every day, Raul is reminded of the shame he
has brought on his family. It’s why so many of these African teenagers
choose a life on the streets of Paris. They will choose sleeping in
stadiums. They will choose drugs. They will choose crime. But they won’t
go back home.

Last Thursday evening, Zahir Belounis went home. He hugged his mother.
He spoke to radio and television stations. He had a platform with which
to tell his story. It’s a story of human rights violations, a story of
football slavery. It’s critical that people listen to his story. It’s
critical that people listen to Issa, Willy and Raul. It’s critical that
the 20,000 footballers trafficked out of Africa are given a voice.

Jean-Louis Dupont, a key member of Jean-Marc Bosman's legal team, has a new challenge: taking on UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations.

Originally published in The Irish Examiner, 26th November 2013.

Earlier this year, Jean-Marc Bosman was sentenced to 12 months in prison for assault and battery.
Living
on benefits in Belgium, his life collapsed in a mire of alcoholism and
mental health problems since his landmark legal victory in 1995, a
generation-defining football moment. Though his personal story is more
complex, there is an inevitable conclusion to draw: Bosman’s scars are
the war-wounds of a weary, lengthy battle with a super-power.

He took on the force of football’s governing body. He bruised them,
broke them, embarrassed them. But the long-lasting effects of the fight
took him down too. An unwilling martyr.

But 20 years on from
Bosman’s case initially being submitted to the European Court of
Justice, another anti-hero is stepping forward.

In May of this
year, a football agent, Daniel Striani, lodged a complaint with the
European Commission (EC) on the grounds that Uefa’s Financial Fair Play
(FPP) regulations are anti-competitive and negatively impact his ability
to generate income. His lawyer is Jean-Louis Dupont, a key member of
Bosman’s legal team, who has a pedigree for taking on high-profile,
high-impact sports law cases and winning them.

Striani’s case
centres on FFP’s ‘break-even’ rule and its basic principle that a club
can only spend what it earns (though there are some ‘acceptable
deviations’). Failure to do so will result in suspension from Uefa
competitions.

With clubs having less to spend on transfers and
with wages likely to decrease, Striani’s economic situation will be
adversely affected. Clearly, FFP contravenes EU law — most notably
restraint on trade and, in the case of players, there’s perhaps a
violation of free movement of workers also. However, so far, the EC’s
view is that FFP regulations, though perhaps not perfect, are
proportional to what could happen to football clubs without stringent
financial stipulations. In simple terms, the end will justify the means.

But according to Dupont, the break-even rule will only serve
to widen the gulf between the traditional, ‘big’ teams and everyone
else. “The break-even rule only ossifies the existing market structure,”
he argues. “Even worse, it increases the gap between the haves and the
have-nots. Uefa, instead of coming up with a very technical answer to a
very technical financial issue, came up with a rather political and
ideological one instead.”

There is also the question of
whether FFP in its current format is legitimate and necessary. Uefa
extols its virtues — how it will provide long-term financial stability
to football clubs and how it will preserve the integrity of the game.
The second point, in particular, irritates Dupont, who feels Uefa’s
territorial plan is flawed and discriminates against smaller EU states,
including Ireland.

“Under Uefa rules, each national football
association must organise its competitions within its boundaries. By
maintaining those rules, Uefa denies top club football to places like
Dublin, Brussels [and] Vienna. Consequently, Uefa cannot use the
“integrity argument” regarding FFP since it has itself produced a
structural playing field that’s uneven to begin with.”

For
Dupont, the current FFP regulations overlook the importance of the size
of domestic markets. Under FFP, each league and each club is treated the
same regardless of the commercial gulf between them. Smaller clubs will
not be able to invest over the long-term and will stay small. That,
according to Dupont, is anti-competitive and goes against EU law.

So, what are the alternatives to FFP? How else can Uefa safeguard
against reckless financial mismanagement of football clubs? Dupont has
spoken before about a ‘luxury tax’ — clubs that want to overspend agree
to a levy, with the money then distributed in a way that promotes
competitive balance or other legitimate objectives. He believes that
changes to Uefa’s territorial pattern would provide viable alternatives
to FFP, alternatives that wouldn’t breach EU law, alternatives that
would see smaller EU countries afforded opportunities to become more
competitive.

Dupont says: “If tomorrow, Scotland and Ireland
would decide to have a common Premier League, would it improve (even
slightly) the level of football in both territories? I think it would.
This example is just to show that even small changes would make a
difference.”

Striani is not challenging Uefa’s existing
territorial pattern as part of his case but Dupont feels a club would
stand a reasonable chance in the EU courts if they decided to pursue a
legal route. “If a Dublin club agrees with the English Premier League to
play with them, from the perspective of EU law, it is their absolute
right to do so. Therefore, any entity (FAI, Uefa, etc) that would try to
stop it from happening would face an uphill battle. They would bear the
burden of proof and would need to justify why such a violation of EU
law would be absolutely necessary. I have my doubts that they would
succeed.”

When informed of Dupont’s latest project, a prickly
Uefa president Michel Platini brushed it off, saying he had a letter of
support from the EC.

Dupont dismisses that support as political, not legal.

Dupont has been here before but Daniel Striani hasn’t. The fight will
last a long time. Bosman’s took five years. It took his career too. And
ruined his life.

About Me

Eoin has over seven years experience working at the highest level of sports broadcasting in both Europe and North America.
In the USA and Canada, he's best-known as a former host of Fox Soccer's nightly studio show Fox Soccer Report while he spent three years with Ireland's national broadcaster RTE.
He's covered world soccer in-depth since starting out as a TV sport researcher and has worked on a multitude of tournaments including FIFA World Cups and UEFA Champions Leagues.
The very first game he attended was Cork City's pre-season friendly against Celtic in July 1994.
City lost 3-2.